Teagan fell. For an endless moment, she hung suspended in the air. The image of her broken body smashed on the rocks below the Hallowed Arch flashed before her eyes. She squeezed her eyes shut, her breath caught in her throat.
She fell, but it was not to her death. Or, well, it wasn’t to the can-never-come-back-from-it kind of death. There was a swooping feeling in her stomach as she landed hard on her knees on cold ground. Despite the stinging pain in her knees, she was grateful for its familiar solidity. The air was chilly, and she rubbed her hands up and down her arms as she got to her feet. She looked around, and though she’d known going through the Bone Way was the first step, she couldn’t help the gasp that slipped out at the sight.
What lay under her boots was a stone path that stretched into the distance as far as her eyes could see, but that wasn’t what shocked her. There were bones everywhere. On either side of the path, broken fingers reached forward as if to grab her. Skulls grinned lopsidedly at her; whole skeletons lay curled or sprawled out as if people had simply stepped off the Bone Way and laid themselves to rest. The sky was a clear, startling gray, a wall of dark slate no matter which way she turned. She wondered if Cress’s hands had itched to grab a pencil, to render the Bone Way alive in the way it was now, as Cress could do with all of her drawings. The sight was amazingly morbid. Those who didn’t make it through this part of the realm never left it; it was impossible to count how many had died here, lost in a forgotten kingdom. More souls for the Shadow Princess’s collection.
A clattering drew her attention. Was someone else here? Cress? Something moved in the corner of her eye, and Teagan whipped her head towards the motion, but saw only the silent white teeth of a pile of skulls. She almost screamed when the bones nearby shifted. It was only a small unfurling of a finger, a hand. Teagan felt shaky as the skeleton lifted itself from the ground. Then it was moving toward her, moaning from unhinged jaws and crawling forward on what was left of its limbs. All around her, the other bones started to rattle. Teagan scrabbled back in horror and swung her pack around so she could reach inside it. Her heart beat furiously as the clacking of the bones grew louder. She rummaged in her pack, panic building as more skeletons clattered to their feet and lunged closer. Finally, breath heavy, Teagan unwrapped the rotten rabbit leg and withdrew Cress’s dagger. The noise of bone grinding against bone receded until they stopped completely. When she looked up from her pack, the bones had settled back in their places, no longer hungry for the human soul who’d trespassed upon their domain.
Cress had saved two legs from the rabbit she’d hunted days ago, and had left them to rot out in the sun, hung from the washing line in the backyard to keep it safe from foxes. The stench was horrible, but Teagan held the meat close to her chest, fearful that if she took her hand far enough away from her body, the bones would sense her human soul and wake again. Teagan paused to light a harmona leaf to try to calm herself and cover the stench. The commonly-used herb for spells emitted a faint smoke that drifted in lazy spirals toward the sky. She held the plant in her left hand as she clutched the leg and the dagger in her right, the putrid meat uncomfortably sponge-like. All was still and silent. She breathed with relief as she made her way down the stone path.
She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten the only rule of the Bone Way. Don’t let them smell the life of you. The dead were always starving, waiting for those fool enough to try to get past them without protection.
“Past the Bone Way, where the dead rest hungry,” Teagan sang to herself. It was part of a Shadow Princess lullaby her mother sang to her when she was a child too imaginative and restless to sleep. It’d been the only thing that could calm her mind, settle her down. Now she laughed, throat thick with grief, at the thought of a little girl who took comfort in a song about death, and the mother who indulged it because she’d understood the darkness inside her. Teagan had always loved the stories, even the bad ones, but a favorite had been the one where the princess saved the love of her life. As she walked the Bone Way, she remembered her mother’s story, hoping that even in this realm, it would quiet her anxious thoughts.
Once there was a girl born of starlight.
She was beloved, the daughter of a blacksmith and a powerful witch. She sat at her father’s knee as he sharpened swords to fight the monsters who’d breached their home’s borders. She walked the forest as her mother healed it time and time again, when the monsters were gone but had left destruction and blood in their wake.
One day, when she was a young girl, a prince rode into town, bringing with him his strongest fighters. He wanted weapons, he told her father, to help his people vanquish the beasts. He wanted a spell to keep him safe, he told her mother, so that he could lead his people into a bright future when the danger was eliminated. People said he was overconfident, and perhaps he was, for when he and his best warriors went into the woods, none returned.
The young girl waited for their arrival for three days. When no sign of them appeared, she took her most prized tools and the knowledge her mother had given her, and set out after the prince.
She found him surrounded by monsters, all alone and scared and hurt. She threw out her mother’s spells as if she, too, were powerful. She slashed at their claws and throats as if she, too, knew how to wield a sharp weapon. And when the beasts kept coming, something rose within her. Bright starlight, covering the forest and the creatures and the dying prince. When the light cleared, she dropped to her knees in the muddy ground and curled her hands into fists. She was so drained she almost didn’t hear the pained groan coming from her right.
The prince was awake, and the girl stumbled over to him, her feet slipping in pools of a murky, inky blackness slowly spreading along the forest floor. She ignored them, didn’t care about what they meant, because all she had eyes for was the handsome young man who had given her the flower he’d picked fresh from her mother’s garden. She pressed her hands to the large wound on his stomach, saw all the cuts and bruises along his beautiful face and arms, the slashes in his clothes.
All she could think about was keeping him alive and bringing him home. Soon the same strange light that had enveloped the monsters and turned them into puddles began to seep into the prince, from her. She started to worry, to pull away, but then she saw that it was healing him, sealing the cuts and smoothing the bruises, knotting his stomach back together more deftly than her mother could. She didn’t understand it, and it seemed unimportant when the prince opened his eyes and smiled at her.
“You saved me,” he said, and she’d never known anything so purely right as that moment when she leaned over and kissed him.
They returned to rejoicing and tear-filled gazes. Her skin retained a pale glow, a shine that made people kneel before her in reverence.
She was the child born of starlight, the one that had been prophesied to save the kingdom from the beasts that had haunted it for years upon years.
Her father gifted her the sword his father had passed down to him, patted her on the shoulder, and told her he knew raising her would be his proudest achievement in life. Her mother gifted her the spellbook of her ancestors, kissed her on the forehead, and told her she knew her daughter had been destined for great things.
And then they let her go, toward her bright future and the prince she’d saved with her starlight.
The Shadow Princess’s story didn’t end there, though this was where her mother would always stop when Teagan was younger. When she became a wild, growing teenager bursting with curiosity, she asked her mother if there were more tales about the princess. She’d looked at Teagan then, appraising her. She nodded slowly and said there were, but that they were not happy ones. Teagan hadn’t cared about whether they were happy or not. She’d wanted to hear her mother’s voice as she lay in her bed at night, with the window open and the forest’s sounds filling the room.
Teagan’s steps were soft and quiet, the dead just as quiet on either side of the path, but her mind was spinning.
She was here, in the Shadow Realm, in a place she’d never thought to be real. It was like nothing she’d ever imagined. She wondered what her mother would say if she could see her now.
Suddenly, a loud, piercing screech rang through the air, tearing Teagan from her thoughts. Teagan swallowed the scream caught in her throat as she looked up and saw a black shadow against the slate-gray sky. It was as if time slowed as the air-borne creature, with a wingspan nearly the length of her entire home, let out another screech so loud that Teagan covered her ears. She’d read about these creatures in Cress’s book. It was a vulture of the Shadow Realm called a virampi, with long, sharp teeth and blood-red eyes.
How had it found her? Cress’s book said they were part of the Realm’s menagerie of horrors but one which didn’t attack unprovoked. But she hadn’t provoked it, had she? She glanced around before her gaze was drawn to the smoke curling up into the sky from the harmona leaf. Oh, she was a fool! The virampi had zeroed in on her. She threw the leaf behind her to distract the virampi and began to run.
It screeched again, but Teagan ignored it, her heart racing, focusing only on the cadence of her feet on the stone path stretching ahead of her. She thought she could see a shape in the distance, something that looked like the Hallowed Arch. It was close—close enough for her to reach it and escape from the terrifying virampi. She grinned from the adrenalin, a grimace born from desperation mixed with tender hope. Then her boot caught on something and she went sprawling. Her knees hit the stone hard, and she gasped with pain as she skidded roughly to a stop. She tucked her chin in and shielded her face, but the impact still hurt. She lay on her stomach, breathing shakily, and forgot herself for a moment. Until the virampi flew low over her head and she curled into a ball. Made herself into as small a target as possible before the monstrous size of the predator.
It swooped toward the ground, freezing the blood in her veins—but it didn’t come for her. Instead it sunk its teeth into the rabbit’s leg, which lay six feet ahead, having been flung from Teagan’s hands when she fell.
“No, no, no,” Teagan moaned, starting toward the creature. But it was too late; the virampi had taken the rotten meat and with a couple of flaps from its impressive wings, disappeared on the horizon.
She knew she’d never catch up to it. She had to get out of the Bone Way or the skeletons would eat her alive. Not her skin and meat and blood, but her soul. They’d gobble up the light inside of her and keep her trapped in this place with them forever.
She’d never be free of the Shadow Realm. Never be with Cress again.
That thought drove fire into her, and she quickened her pace. She didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead, she didn’t want to get distracted, but she could hear the bones. Slow and clacking and moaning. It was awful, and even though she was running, the dead were waking faster and faster. They were moving onto the path even before she’d reached them, already stretching their pale fingers toward her. She could see the stone arch clearly now. It towered above the Bone Way, its shadows blending in with the grayness of the sky, and Teagan knew that if she made it past the arch, she’d be safe—or at least, safe from the skeletons. She remembered Cress telling her they couldn’t cross the barrier, before Teagan had silenced her with a kiss.
Her breathing was hitched and dreadful, her heart clenching tight in her chest, but she couldn’t stop. Not when she was so close, not when she could feel the bones nipping at her heels. Suddenly, her head was wrenched back in fiery pain. A bony hand had snagged her hair and it refused to let go. Teagan swung her dagger up and sliced its fingers off. Freed, she burst ahead with renewed speed. Finally, just there, the archway rose like a beacon of light and hope in this otherwise desolate and deadly place. Teagan pushed forward and dove toward its hallowed barrier.
The clacking grew quiet, and Teagan looked over her shoulder to find the dead lumbering back to their final resting places. They hadn’t gotten their meal. They would sleep again until another unfortunate soul woke them. But it wouldn’t be her.
The Bone Way was only the first part of the realm. More dangers awaited her, but Teagan steeled her shoulders, turned her back on the bones, and stepped through the new archway.